Mario's Blog

Hello friends of old-school technology ;-)

Who still remembers 386MAX from Qualitas? Next to QEMM it was one of the big memory managers for DOS and Windows 3.x. Qualitas released the sources under the GNU GPL v3 some time ago – and Open 386MAX is my fork that builds everything with open-source tools on Linux (Open Watcom, JWasm, jwlink), replaces the parts that only existed as binaries and develops 386MAX further.

It is the whole package: 386MAX.SYS, 386LOAD, 386UTIL, MAXIMIZE, ASQ, the MAX shell, ExtraDOS, the Windows tools (MAXedit, MAXmeter, PIF editor, GoAhead, DOSMAX, Toolbox) and the DOS and Windows installers – in English and German, without serial numbers or registration.

There are two new releases:

Open 386MAX 8.58 – the stable maintenance line, bug fixes only:

• A20 handling fixed (port 92h, INT 15h 2400h–2402h)
• INT 15h E801h/E820h no longer show 386MAX’s own memory as free
• fixes in XMS, EMS, VCPI (machines with 1 GB of RAM and more) and nested DPMI callbacks
• no more fake Weitek/EMC87 coprocessor on 486 and newer
• SETUPDOS, MAXIMIZE, STRIPMGR and ASQ know FreeDOS and DR DOS (FDCONFIG.SYS, DCONFIG.SYS, FDAUTO.BAT, …) and their memory managers
• ASQ no longer writes into the system ROM area (crash under UEFI with CSMWrap)
• every fix has its own test in the regression suite

Open 386MAX 9.00-beta1 – the first test release of the new development line, not for production use:

• QEMM programming interface (QPI): port trapping, mapping contexts, IRQ calldowns and more – the functions DESQview, SBEMU and VSBHDA use on QEMM 97
• DESQview 2.80 runs on 386MAX in its QEMM mode, background windows and a BBS node on COM1 included
• DPMI host on par with HDPMI: long file names and FAT32 from protected mode, mouse translation, HX and DOS/4GW together with VSBHDA
• XMS 3.5: RAM above 4 GB as super-extended memory, a RAM disk up there with 386DISK /XMSSX
• modern machines: shadow RAM of Intel and AMD chipsets (up to Zen 5), the free upper memory of a UEFI CSM
• unattended installation with SETUP.INF, a RAM disk for TEMP
• ASQ for Windows (WINASQ) with a graphical map of the first megabyte
• a regression suite of about 50 test programs under 386MAX, EMM386, JEMM, HDPMI, CWSDPMI and QEMM 97 on MS-DOS 6.22/7.1, FreeDOS, DR DOS and SvarDOS

Everything was tested in QEMU – the beta now needs real hardware. If you have an old (or new) machine with DOS on it, please try it and report the machine (chipset/CPU, RAM, BIOS or UEFI CSM), the DOS, your CONFIG.SYS and 386MAX.PRO, how much upper memory 386MAX finds and whether MAXIMIZE completes. On a hang a photo of the last screen helps a lot.

The releases come with floppy, USB and CD images, English and German.

Project Page

Release Page

Have fun with the new releases.

If you find any bugs, you can keep them ;-) – or better report them this time ;-)

mfg

Mario

Hello friends of old-school technology ;-)

Did you ever want an MS-DOS that is newer than 6.22, but without Windows around it? Microsoft never sold one – the last MS-DOS lives inside Windows 95, 98 and ME. msdosinst builds it for you: a set of four bootable 1.44 MB floppy images that install MS-DOS 7.1 with the GeosOne Dual Installer.

How it works:

• disk 1 boots and starts the setup (licenses, options)
• no drive C: yet? FDISK starts, the computer restarts and the setup continues
• C: not formatted? FORMAT
• SYS C:, MS-DOS to C:\DOS from four disks, new CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
• then further software from other disks (for example AHCIASPI) in the same run

What is on the disks:

• the system is MS-DOS 7.1 of Windows 98 SE, with a small IO.SYS (small-io-sys) and “MS-DOS 7.1” instead of “Windows 98” in the messages
• the newest MS-DOS programs of Windows ME and 98 SE, plus the MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 95 “OLDMSDOS” programs that are not in them, and the Windows 3.x programs of MS-DOS 6.22
• FDISK shows 100 GB disks and more correctly, FORMAT shows the size of large disks correctly, and FORMAT /S works again
• options: HIMEM, EMM386, German keyboard and country, DOSSHELL, MEMMAKER, MSBACKUP, SHARE for Windows 3.x and more

The set is German so far, the setup included.

The project contains no Microsoft programs. You need your own, licensed CDs and disks (Windows ME, 98 SE and 95 German, MS-DOS 6.22 with the Supplemental Disk). The PowerShell script mkdosset.ps1 (Windows or Linux) takes the files from them, as ISO images, 7-Zip archives or plain files, and writes the disk images.

Project Page

Release Page

Have fun with it.

If you find any bugs, you can keep them ;-)

mfg

Mario

Hello friends of old-school technology ;-)

There is a new release of the GeosOne Dual Installer (GDI) – version 1.10.0.

For everybody who has not met it yet: GDI is an installer for DOS programs, drivers and Windows 3.x software. It is one single INSTALL.EXE with two faces: started from DOS it shows a text mode setup in the style of the good old Qualitas MAX (386MAX) setup – title bar, cyan dialogs and a key bar. Started from Windows 3.1x or 95/98/ME the same file brings up a native Win16 setup. Both read the same INSTALL.INI, so a package author writes the setup once.

What it can do:

• welcome text, up to nine licenses, target directory and options
• adds and removes lines in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
• edits SYSTEM.INI, WIN.INI, Program Manager groups and the Windows 3.x registry – everything journalled
• checked binary patches by byte signature
• INSTALL /U removes everything again and restores the old files and settings; updates of an installed version
• several packages in one run, compressed archives over several disks
• in DOS mode: FDISK, FORMAT and the installation of a whole DOS in one run

What’s new in 1.10.0:

• the installer speaks the language of the system: COUNTRY= under DOS, [intl] of WIN.INI under Windows – English and German so far, English for everything else
• all texts live in one file (src/language.ini); a new language is just a new section, the build makes the C header out of it
• the Windows frontend now runs the installer core itself with real Windows dialogs (licenses, options, progress); only packages that really need DOS still go to the DOS engine
• the sources are split into the installer core, the DOS and Win16 platform parts and two user interfaces
• [Run] Windows= starts a program once under Windows after setup
• uninstall hands a created parent directory over to the packages still in it

Tested in QEMU under MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 (from DOS, through the native frontend and through the DOS engine, in English and German), with the Windows 3.1x update CD and with the MS-DOS 7.1 disk set.

Project Page

Release Page

Have fun with the new release.

If you find any bugs, you can keep them ;-)

mfg

Mario